The Third Generation Partnership (3GPP) has aimed to incorporate the wireless local area network (WLAN) to order to improve the current communication technology. The 3GPP/WLAN radio interworking Release-12 (Rel-12) has proposed a solution related to Core Network (CN) based WLAN offloading so as to improve the overall user quality of experience (QoE) and network utilization by providing more control to the network operators. These improvements could be further enhanced by Long Term Evolution (LTE)/WLAN aggregation and LTE/WLAN inter-working enhancements that are relevant to both co-located and non-co-located deployment scenarios. A WLAN termination node (WTN) currently may include one or more access points (APs). User Equipment (UEs) that are capable of connecting to multiple radio access technologies (RAT) may initiate a WLAN measurement report while an eNB configures the UE to perform WLAN measurements which may include measurements of frequency, channel, WLAN identifier, and etc. Furthermore, deployment scenarios in the next generation access technologies may include WLAN/AP or nodes supporting licensed/unlicensed spectrum. Detailed description of these next generation access technologies could be found in 3GPP TR 38.913, 3GPP TR 38.804, 3GPP R2-164306 which are incorporated by reference for which is incorporated by reference for supplementing the terms and concepts of the disclosure.
For example, as shown in FIG. 1A, “M node” of FIG. 1 could be an eNB, a new radio (NR) node, a LTE node, a transmission/reception point (TRP), and so forth. The “S node” could be an eNB, a WLAN, a NR node, a Licensed-Assisted access (LAA) node, a high frequency node, an unlicensed frequency node, a distributed node, a TRP, and so forth. UEs (e.g. UE_1, UE_2, UE_3, UE_4, UE_5, UE_6) capable of LTE-WLAN aggregation (LWA)/dual connectivity (DC)/LAA functionalities could be configured with split/configurable/LWA/LAA bearer. Currently, the enhanced LWA (eLWA) system builds on the Rel-13 LWA framework without departing from the LWA architecture and thus supports WLAN nodes deployed and controlled by operators and their partners. FIG. 1B illustrates the current R-13 LWA framework which utilizes a split bearer scheme including at least a split LTE bearer and a split LWA bearer. The detailed principle of operation of FIG. 2 is recorded in R2-162183 which is incorporated by reference for supplementing the terms and concepts of the disclosure. The objectives of this work item are to specify an additional feature of LWA directed to uplink (UL) data transmission for WLAN, including UL bearer switch and bearer split.
In 3GPP TSG RAN WG2 #94 meeting minutes, RAN2 concluded the following agreements including: 1. Sending a PDCP PDUs to WLAN is based on “some” eNB control without impacting existing WLAN MAC. (This eliminates full per packet eNB scheduling of WLAN and eliminates full UE implementation). 2. Only support split bearer type for Rel-14 eLWA UL. 3. UE could be configured so that traffic on the UL split bearer could only be submitted for transmission on both, WLAN only or LTE only.